


Dick Move

by anenglishwolf



Series: Steve and the Soldier [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Memory Loss, much more winter soldier than bucky barnes, no memory retrieval, winter soldier/steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 15:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5168561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anenglishwolf/pseuds/anenglishwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is a master tactician.  Seriously, would he not use up every last option to bring in the Winter Soldier?  Including being the hottest superhero on the planet?  (Maybe.)</p>
<p>In which Steve seduces the Winter Soldier into giving himself up, the Soldier courts him with stolen jewels and Me To You bears, and the whole thing's a little sadder than you might expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dick Move

**Author's Note:**

> This is a [Me To You tatty-bear. ](http://www.characterwise.co.uk/me-to-you-24-bear-love-you-padded-hearts) The Winter Soldier's favoured courtship gift, along with hot rocks, preferably sapphires for Steve's eyes.
> 
> This is definitely a Winter Soldier/Steve fic. There is no Bucky here to be had.
> 
> I haven't warned for non-con because you would have to squint a lot, but Steve is very sensitive to the possibility. Please note that there is joking discussion and comments to the effect that one might 'owe' sex to someone, but this is not seriously intended by the characters.

Afterwards, when Natasha's teasing him about his tactics, calling him 'Mata Hari' and asking if he's had secret honeytrap training for extra-special missions, Steve gets exasperated. “I did what had to be done,” he says, brusque as any red-cheeked blushing all-American hero. “I'm a strategist, ma'am. Would you expect me to leave any possible useful tool out of my arsenal?”

But first off, when he actually regains consciousness, and finds that he's on the side of the river with the Winter Soldier looming over him, the Helicarrier still crumbling above them, nothing so coherent or calculating goes through his head. It's much more a matter of instinct, knowing that he's temporarily too bruised and broken for any effective fighting technique. There's only one thing he has left, so he uses it: and to that limited extent, you could call it a tactic. 

There's nothing to say it will work: and God knows, back when the Winter Soldier was still Bucky Barnes, it was Steve who lay awake at nights and burned. Pretty much in the way that the nuns at Sister Maria's Sunday school used to tell them it was better to marry, than to burn. But if he couldn't marry Bucky – and he was pretty sure he couldn't, unfortunately – then burning with desire seemed like the preferable option. He was pretty sure that he couldn't marry Bucky, nor nothing else with him, neither. He'd never given any sign of it, and it wasn't as if Steve wasn't looking out for it real careful.

Now, though, if Steve's not crazy, he thinks that maybe he's seeing some indicators, some tells. For starters, the Soldier hasn't got the heck out of Dodge and left Steve to drown in the Hudson, which has to mean something. Last thing Steve can remember is air bubbling up out of his lungs through dirty river water, in fact, so the first inference he can make is that the Soldier cares enough about his hide to have dragged him to safety on the riverbank.

First inference, then second observation: he's up close, too. On all fours over Steve, in fact, staring down at him in that frankly unnerving way he's got now, considering that there's still not a spark of recognition in his eyes. He's watching Steve, like – like Steve's prey? Now that would be a reasonable inference, considering all the hunting he's been doing. But a killer who's winged and wounded his prey, wouldn't he normally go in for the kill? The Soldier – Bucky – is just looking at Steve. Looking at him carefully, all over his face, checking his torso more like he's checking his vitals than searching out vulnerable spots for a nice fatal blow. Well, checking out – something, anyhow. 

There's no spark in Bucky's eyes, no, nothing that says he's back and the Winter Soldier's taken a hike. But his pupils are dilated. And his breathing's slow. And since he woke up, here in this discombobulating unrecognisable century, Steve has hit a few gay bars with Sam, because what the heck and if nobody cares anymore, what does he have to hide? He knows what being checked out looks like. (He knows what _he_ looks like, too. They haven't stopped making mirrors, just because everything's gone hi-tech. Other people's responses, every day, sometimes all day every day, would make the knowledge unavoidable, even without mirrors.) That checking looked pretty much like _checking out_ to him.

None of this is as conscious, careful and coherent as his personal notes make it sound, after the fact. It's just one observation after another, clicking into place, and it's like the conclusion pings up like the total on a register, inevitable. He doesn't even consciously think about it, about choosing the appropriate course of action given the data available. Steve just thinks on his feet, like he has to so often. He takes action.

It's not the usual type of action he takes, on a mission. But it seems pretty effective anyway, when he cranes his head up, and lets his river-wet lips brush over the Soldier's – hardly a kiss, really, he's too exhausted and all the fight's knocked out of him. Just touching, lips smoothing over lips. And he brings a hand up, and trails it from the Soldier's thigh, up his torso, gentle but deliberate, and unmistakable in intent. Over all that crazed-assassin black leather and BDSM strappage and whatnot, but he knows Bucky feels it anyway. He can feel all the tension and flexing, where his fingers trail.

The Soldier doesn't react immediately – just allows himself to be caressed, rigidly immobile. (On the other hand, he doesn't knock Steve's block off, so that counts as a plus.) His breathing does speed up. And then he's on Steve – literally on him, dropping down the foot's distance between them to press their bodies together. And, yes, _on_ him: and Steve's had a few smackers laid on him before, before and after being a man-sized ice-popsicle, but he's never been half- _eaten_ this way, never been pinned down like someone's afraid he might run before they manage to grope every red white and blue inch of him. 

Steve thinks he's doing pretty well, being in a fit state to make a report at all, after an experience like that one. He'd like to see even the Widow, seducing her childhood buddy/would-be assassin in the field, disabling him as an opponent, establishing an absence of immediately lethal intent and bringing him in. Not just bringing him in disarmed and vulnerable, but purring like a kitten, and clinging on to Steve like he's going to maul and mangle anyone who tries to take away his new favourite toy. Just let her try, that's all.

xxx

“So, the Dick Move – that's what we're officially calling it, now, right, Captain? - is it going to form part of the manual of approved hand-to-hand techniques in the field? Or,” Tony muses, “do I mean hand-to-dick?”

First team meeting, after bringing the Soldier in, and Tony is making himself a delight, just like usual. But Steve keeps his face like stone – as far as he's able – and carries on making notes in his tablet. “Tony, if you think it's going to be any use to you, inside the Ironman suit, then you can call it what you damn well like, and try it out in the field too,” Steve says drily. “Now, can we get back to more urgent business? Infiltrating the Triskelion? Destroying a helicarrier or two? Ring any bells?”

It's like working with _children_. Clint puts his feet up on the table, and aims a paper plane between Steve's eyes. “C'mon, Cap. We just want to hear a little more about how you brought in your boy. I mean, considering most of us were assuming you were a virgin – well, _I_ was assuming you were a virgin – actually, I was assuming it was a straight nunnery vs. superhero decision, for your career choices, Sister Stephanie - it's a pretty impressive move, dick involvement or not. I mean, I can't see that even Nat could have pulled him off – pulled it off, sorry, I mean, pulled it off, right, Nat?”

Then he gives a high little squeal like a girly girl, with his ass hitting the floor, because Natasha's stuck a leg out sideways, at an anatomically improbable angle that must owe something to her ballet training. She's yanked his chair out from under him. 

“I could _so_ ,” she sniffs. He's wounded her professional pride. Never wound Natasha Romanoff's professional pride, is the lesson that Steve takes away from that. 

“Where is he, anyway, Steve?” Bruce Banner asks, leaning over the table like a guy who's just _jonesing_ for a good relationship discussion, like he's _this_ far away from offering his professional accredited counselling skills and trained empathy. “I mean, it's fairly obvious that he's undergone a significant imprinting experience, and since you brought him in he's been very keen to shadow you in your professional duties – ”

“Joined at the hip,” Tony carols out, and stops abruptly. From the accompanying glare, it looks like Pepper just kicked him under the table. 

“But,” Bruce continues manfully, “it's slightly concerning that, despite our best efforts, and SHIELD's resources, he keeps slipping off and eluding us every so often. Are we doing enough to maintain surveillance on these expeditions? To make sure that HYDRA don't reacquire him?”

“Don't sweat it,” Sam drawls, and he's winking at Steve. Steve resolutely refuses to catch or acknowledge the wink. “A guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do, when it comes to winning his honey's heart. He's always going to come back: because he's got something warm to come back to. That right, Stevie?”

Steve closes his eyes. You just can't rely on anybody, he thinks. Everyone's a joker. 

“But what is it that he's doing?” Bruce persists, still looking concerned. “Shouldn't we be crediting some agents with the job of tailing him, if he eludes SHIELD perimeter lines again, to prevent another incident?”

“Put it this way, Kermit,” Clint suggests, climbing up from the carpet and sliding back into his seat. He looks just a little bit ruffled, as befits a guy used to getting his ass kicked by the Black Widow. “You know the footage on the news channels a coupla nights back, the robbery at Tiffanys? Check out the footage a little closer. _Then_ check out the Captain's right hand, and see where Wally is. Diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but it looks like our masked marauder thinks sapphires befit a military man. More discreet and classy, right? And they go with Steve's eyes.”

Oh hell. And now everyone – everyone who didn't know already, which is everyone who isn't Natasha or Clint or Sam, the ones he's sworn to secrecy – is gawping at him like he's a Kardashian. And when he uncomfortably sticks his hand under the table, there are wails of protest. So much so that he gives in, holds it up and waves it around a bit, powerfully embarrassed. Yet also feeling a touch of proprietorial pride. Probably how a cavewoman feels, when her man brings home a particularly toothsome chunk of brontosaurus. Not that proprietorial feelings are really appropriate, considering that that chunk of blue fire on his right hand is a hot rock, red hot, microwaved. 

Oohs and aaahs sweep around the table, his hand is grabbed at and nearly salivated over, and the attention is stunned, admiring and disapproving in about equal measure. “You never give _me_ sapphires,” Tony sniffs at Pepper. “You really need to up your game for Valentine's day, just sayin'.”

Pepper looks up from her phone, and wrinkles her pretty freckled nose. “Tell him, rubies would have gone better with your colouring, Steve.” And she looks back down again, a woman who has made her contribution for the day.

“That is a courtship gift worthy of the name,” Thor booms. And if a boom can be slightly wistful, then his is. “I would not turn aside a suitor who showed me his regard and esteem so richly and with such disregard for all dangers encountered.” _What a man_ , his swoony expression seems to suggest.

“Why is it on your right hand, though?” Bruce asks, puzzled. “No, wait a minute, what am I saying? Why is it on your hand _at all?_ Why isn't it back with Tiffany's? Why haven't you called the cops on the larcenous ex-HYDRA maniac assassin in our midst? Why – why–.” He abandons this line of questioning, and bangs his forehead on the table. 

Steve has answers, though. Maybe not great answers, but _answers_. “He, um, got upset when I took it off,” he mumbles, embarrassed. “And it's on the right hand because – he put it on my left hand, but, I mean, we're not engaged or anything, jeez, but I did put it back, on the right, and it keeps him calm, and –. Um. I guess we should maybe give it back, though. And explain to him that it's not a good idea. Uh, robbing jewellers, and that kind of thing.”

“You think?” Tony asks, quizzical, midway through taking a pen, a protractor and a desk widget apart and rebuilding them into a model of Rodin's Thinker, because team meetings never do occupy his mind sufficiently. “And to answer you, Jolly Green Giant,” he adds, pointing half a broken pen at Bruce, “we're not handing Bucky Barnes over to the NYPD, because a) you think they can cope with the Winter Soldier? And b) you think they can keep HYDRA off? Plus c) kind of low on the list behind HYDRA themselves. And d), if Rogers isn't interested in the kind of paramour who'll steal high-value ice to win his heart, then maybe take him on a Bonny 'n' Clyde high-speed road-trip with the cops and a few bounty hunters after their hides and a lot of motel sex, then I may just take Barnes off his hands.”

“No, you won't,” Steve says, smartly, automatically. Not that he'd known he was going to say it. “And who says I'm not interested?”

Oh, heck. And now all eyes are really on him. “Well,” Sam says measuringly, like a man who's given the issue some thought. “I would normally assume that if a guy is prepared to go to the lengths of armed robbery, to persuade his honey to give it up, then that strongly suggests that said honey has not, in fact, given it up. Yet. Or isn't that right, Captain?”

It's like the glare of a thousand suns, the trained focus of every eye in the room upon him. But he is Captain America, and he cannot tell a lie. Even of omission. Not with so little wiggle-room. “Um, that would be _no_ ,” he mumbles. He's looking down at the table, and his face feels like someone's turned the thermostat up to eleven. “I mean, it would be unprofessional.... and unethical... probably unwise...”

Natasha is actually gawping. He has never seen such an undefendedly dumbfounded expression, practically human, on that cool mannequin face. “Seriously?” she squawks. “You feel the guy up, roll about necking with him in the mud on a riverbank, you grope him till he's lost what he's got left in the cranium and he comes trotting in to give himself up to SHIELD, he abandons the mission and betrays HYDRA – can I repeat that, he _betrays HYDRA_ , an organisation not noted for their forgiving mercy when it comes to disobedient assets – and then... You haven't given it up?”

“Well,” Steve says, and halts. “It sounds bad, when you put it like that.”

Tony's shaking his head, cat-a-corner at the table. “Now that's what I _call_ a dick move,” he says.

Clint is murmuring something about 'Captain Cock-tease' when the door of the meeting-room beeps and opens up, even though everyone with the access code is already in this room. And the Soldier strolls in, looking pleased, as he flexes his metal hand and looks down at it. He seems to have some function going on with it that helps him hotwire about ninety percent of locks, doors and safes, and Tony's itching for a crack at it. But he doesn't fancy a crack in the mouth, so he hasn't pushed it too much yet.

All eyes are on the Soldier, now – some of them unwarrantedly sympathetic, in Steve's opinion, jeez, he hasn't _murdered_ anybody – and it would be a relief. Except that his eyes are trained solely on Steve, and it's like he's a frickin' homing pigeon or something. Natasha's the only person he acknowledges, besides, and that only as he passes her chair, swaps what sounds like cordial insults in Russian, and then – and then sits down on Steve's lap.

Which Steve should be getting used to, at this point. It might take a while. 

“Hey, bud,” Clint offers, tipping himself back in his own chair like he hasn't learnt _anything_ from Nat expressing her displeasure. “Not that you're not welcome to the strategy meeting, and all – but you might want to, uh – there's plenty of chairs, right? I mean, the requisitions department of SHIELD may be pretty tight with the funds when it comes to land-to-air missiles, but we're not short of an office chair or two, yet?”

The Soldier doesn't actually reply: besides Steve, he's mostly only spoken to Natasha, and rarely to Bruce in medical exams, in the five days since he caved and turn-coated to SHIELD, to the best of Steve's knowledge. He just puts his metal hand behind him, and gives Clint the finger, while attempting to give Steve a hickey in greeting. He's definitely picked up a little American, then.

The silence may be a little bit awed. It's not that some of them – read, Tony, certainly – can't identify with, at certain points, allowing their sex lives to rule, well, their lives. But this is a whole new level. “The Winter Soldier's new mission: get into Steve Rogers' pants,” Sam observes. Steve is too busy trying to hold Buck off to remonstrate with him. 

“Well, the heart wants what the heart wants,” Tony says, vaguely. He looks a little frazzled around the goatee, and loosens his collar. Is it getting warm in there? Yeah, everybody's getting warm in there. “Or, as I like to paraphrase, the dick wants what the dick wants. I guess... can we... I suppose we should try to work through the order of business of the meeting?” He sounds doubtful. The Winter Soldier is going to constitute something of a distraction. He's now trying to slide a hand under Steve's shirt, and murmuring something in Russian that is probably extremely fortunately totally unintelligible to Steve, in his ear, hot-breathed and passionate. (Natasha is... Natasha is blushing? Whatever Buck is whispering is making Natasha blush? Oh, help.)

“Most wise,” Thor agrees. Even he looks a little overheated. “Comrade Rogers, brother of the SHIELD, perhaps I might assist in your predicament here. If you would wish?”

“Oh, God, yes,” Steve moans – and that's maybe not the best way to phrase it. It seems like the Soldier has enough English to know what that might more _usually_ mean. And he likes to hear it. Well, judging by the increased groping activity, laboured breathing, and the fact that the whole Buck's tongue/Steve's neck interface going on increasingly suggests he thinks Steve is a nice hunk of silverside he'd like to swallow whole. 

It's a forbidding spectacle, but Thor's man-and-a-half enough for almost any mission. He stands – maybe a little slower, perhaps with a mite less alacrity than that with which he's previously faced Chitauri and crazy robots – and he steps in Steve's direction. The way he's lifting his arms as he moves makes clear his intent to lift the Soldier off Steve and – well – relocate him elsewhere.

He doesn't get far, before Steve feels – instead of a whole lot of tongue and a distressing attempt to mark him up like he's branded with the Soldier's insignia – the ticky-ticky vibration of a low and vicious growl, against his neck. Thor pauses. Nobody blames him. _Everybody_ pauses. It's dead quiet.

Thor sits back down quietly, and nobody blames him, not one bit. 

“Ah, maybe we'll just get right on to the next item. Nobody prod the bear through the bars, 'kay? We'll just...” Tony prods at a link on his embedded intranet screen, brought up out of its den in the underbelly of the meeting room table, doing his best at _oblivious_.

It's not doing much. Nobody's paying any attention. Natasha squeals, and everyone else is looking in the same direction too, and it's not at Tony. 

“Oh, my God! It's a Me to You bear! Steve, he got you a Me to You tatty-bear! He really is courting you!” Yeah, Natasha squeals. But it's Clint who manages to express her animally raw delight in words. They – all of the them, the table round – are gazing at the small, three or four inches high little stuffed bear, with a ribbon wrapped around its plump belly, that the Soldier has slapped negligently on the table behind his back. It's gripped in his metal hand, and there's something eerie about the combo of lethal HYDRA tech, and a tiny gift-store love-bear, with shiny inhuman fingers digging into its neck and artificially-weathered shabby-chic furry bear-ass. The legend on the satin heart on its tummy reads, LOVE YOU THIIIIIIIIIIIS MUCH – or LO-- – U TH-- -UCH, from what's visible, in the Soldier's grip.

The Soldier isn't listening. He's too busy transferring his attentions to Steve's ear. Even Steve doesn't seem all that alert to the digression the conversation's taken. He's too busy looking at the Soldier out of the straining corner of his eye, half-appalled and half-aroused. 

But Thor's paying attention, all right. He bends forward to examine the bear, and looks powerfully intrigued. “Why, that is a princely gift for a beloved, my friend,” he announces. And the flattery must do the trick, for when he reaches out a hesitant – for Thor – hand, to pick the bear up, that metal claw relaxes, and allows it. 

Thor is charmed. He holds the bear up to the assembled company, and, well, coos at it. “Why, noble bear, you carry a message of love and brotherhood 'twixt one heart and another! Indeed,” he adds wistfully, “I can imagine that such a token, such a shabby troubadour of needlework and kapok, might soften the hardest heart. Even my brother's, perchance.”

And it's funny how everyone's mind was immediately springing to Loki, in any case, even if he hadn't gone there. “You can get them personalised, you know, Thor,” Natasha ventures, her eye on him with careful calculation. “You could order one to say, 'Love You My Bro Boo-Boo', even. You know, if you wanted.”

Thor doesn't offer her a reply. But he does nod thoughtfully, courteously in her direction, and it's clear that it's message received, understood and cogitated upon. 

“Well, that's the whole lot of my Valentine's Day gifts sorted out, anyhow,” Tony announces cheerfully. “A scruffy bear reading 'Shoot that Poison Arrow' for the archer, one with 'Kiss Me, Cuddle Me, Kill Me Softly' for the Black Widow', 'Hunka Burning Love' for my Pep –”

He's abruptly interrupted, when the Soldier's arm darts out backwards – he's still busy gettin' busy, yep – at an angle that no flesh and blood limb could manage. He yanks the bear back out of Thor's hand. (Who was fortunately holding it in much the flat-palmed manner of one feeding a horse, and doesn't lose any digits in the process.) And, feeling around for Steve's hand, too otherwise occupied to lift his head to actually look for it, he presses the fatly stuffed little fabric love-letter into Steve's hand instead. 

Steve accepts it, quietly. And nods – eyes closed, could be ecstasy or resignation or disbelief, who knows – when Tony watches them a moment. Then says, “Okay, bods of SHIELD. We're re-locating this meeting to the nearest coffeeshop. Or the shawarma place. I'm not guaranteeing there'll be no sharwarma involved. Give these guys a little privacy.”

Steve doesn't protest his usurped authority: it's best all around, for everyone. And the guys, the team, they shuffle out of the meeting room in single file, smiling and nodding at him, a little abashed in most cases, and avoiding meeting the eye of the Soldier. Who is still murmuring in Steve's ear, which seems to transfix the Widow as she passes.

She stops, and hesitates. Then translates, presumably for his benefit, looking away out the window. “ _I know my masters, and they will send more after me. But none shall be allowed to touch a hair of your head, my love. I shall kill them all._ ” That's what he's saying,” she adds helpfully: and then darts out, as the Soldier grunts in approval and thanks.

Clint, unusually, doesn't follow where she leads immediately. He winks at Steve instead. “Now _that_ , you should put on a tatty bear. Except that it wouldn't fit. Maybe just the last five words.”

“Thanks, Clint,” Steve says, a little helpless. “I'm not sure it would sell, though.”

But they're left in peace – or alone, at least – and it seems as if the Soldier approves. If an athletically gymnastic flip, to straddle Steve's legs, is a satisfactory indicator, at any rate. He's still talking in Russian, something clearly disapproving by the tone, as he plays with Steve's hair and grinds up against him, and Steve feels helplessly sad. (It's a long way from being all he's feeling. But then Bucky never pressed into him like this, never grabbed his hand to kiss it or slid a hand under his t-shirt to count his abs by feel. Not except in his dreams, anyway. If Steve was unaffected – wasn't throbbing with an intensity of sensation that's so violent he's almost numb with it, wasn't helplessly obedient as the Soldier prods him this way and that, for better access, for nibbles and fondles that test the limits of what Steve will allow – then he'd be something other than superhuman.)

“I know you can speak English,” he says to the Soldier, trying to sound disapproving, or strict, or like a team-leader. Trying not to pant and quiver, while he does it. “You speak English to Sam, in counseling. You speak English in the field. It doesn't matter if you're Bucky or not, the Soldier still speaks English, and half a dozen other languages. And we can't _do_ this, soldier.”

It gets him an interrogative burst of language, still unintelligible, disapproving, accompanying a thumb over one nipple. (This shirt's seams are history, just like they are themselves, Steve and Bucky and Peggy and the Howling Commandos and Howard and the whole kit and caboodle.) “If you're not Bucky,” Steve says, feeling how vague and slack his face is, how much the village idiot he'd look to any witness. “If he's in there somewhere, maybe, but not conscious – there are consent issues –”

The Soldier tuts at him, and that translates in any language. Then he grips the arms of the chair, and slides to his knees. It takes him four minutes, to comprehensively win the argument, without words in any language too.

xxx

In the morning, they're in the communal kitchen at Stark Towers, and the Soldier is making his breakfast and coffee. (He's not sure it's purely a matter of wooing the love-object, in this case. He also insists on tasting everything Steve eats beforehand, so it may be more a matter of a policy of _trust no-one, feed Steve up 'til he bursts_ , and _caramel pop-tarts do not qualify as a food-group._ )

It's not often everyone shows up to a communal breakfast, even on weekends. But today Tony is the last one in, and that completes the set. As he shows up through the kitchen door, yawning and sweaty from a productive night in the lab, ears ringing from one last rousing ninety decibel spin of 'Whole Lotta Rosie', a cup of coffee gets shoved in his slack and unresisting hand. It's delivered by a vicious metal claw, which makes him flinch a moment. But then Dum-E doesn't make half such good single-estate single-bean, so he doesn't complain. He just gulps it down, and sits next to Steve.

Who looks about as shagged-out as he feels. And judging by the hickeys leading down his neck, down and down and – the hem of his t-shirt is rucked up, and there's one there on his belly, too. Tony starts to sing, but not AC/DC. “Waterloo,” he warbles, off-key. “Finally facing my Waterloo, I was defeated you won the war... So, complete strategic annhilation, then?” he asks. “The Soldier has attained his objective and silenced all dissent and tight-ass objections?”

They look at the Soldier, not discreet at all, most of them. Half the table anyway, Clint and Nat and Thor and Sam, although Bruce is busy with writing code for his sub-Sesame Street quasi-Professor Proton science-for-kids website, and Professor Selvig, dropped in for the weekend, is cheering him on in a Count von Count voice. The Soldier is cooking at the stove, flipping pancakes, coming over and shovelling a mountain of them onto Clint's plate. He's wearing an apron, pink and frilly and bearing the dyslexic legend KISS THE COCK. Blink and you'd think it was 'kiss the cook', except that underneath in smaller letters is the sub-heading, LICK THE DICK. (It's probably Tony's. Who else would buy that?) This is over his usual none-more-black military-goth uniform, too. And accessorised with an expression of quietly smug triumph, and a few hickeys of his own. 

Steve sighs. But he doesn't really sound annoyed. “Don't give me grief about it, Tony. Or at least get in line. You think you're the first to say anything?

Sam scrutinizes him across the table, carefully. “He's still the Soldier, right, though? No overnight epiphanies? No reminiscences about childhood baseball games and favourite asthma inhalers, cosy little Depression-era anecdotes about getting beaten by nuns and fighting over the last toasted cockroach?”

And Steve gets his own pancakes delivered – a mountain more than Clint's, even, and with Nutella and peanut butter jars and syrup bottles plonked down beside his plate. A metal hand strays over his shoulder, mission accomplished, plays with his pinkened ear, strays through his hair. Steve doesn't look up, just down at his plate. His expression smooths out into a great calm peace, gentle and sad and vanquished by bliss. “No,” he says, softly. “It's still the Winter Soldier. Never a glimpse of Bucky. Nothing.”

Nat, the pragmatist, is working on her own pancakes. Mouth full, she jabs her fork at the small scruffy cousin to Bucky Bear, on the other side of Steve's plate to the syrup bottles. “Well,” she says. “Good. You have a lover and protector who will destroy all threats to your security. And a rock on your finger, and a tatty bear. He has a home, and no handlers tying him down and messing with his brain, a warm bed, a hot lover and company, family. He's in love, and he has today and the future and useful occupation saving the world, what could be nicer? Most memories are bad anyway, who needs them. Good riddance.”

Steve doesn't look completely convinced, perhaps. Not all of the sadness is ironed out of his face, as the Soldier bends and kisses his brow, and returns to the stove. 

But he smiles at Nat, and anyone would say he was reconciled, as he picks up his bear, with a hand that gleams blue. And he says, “It's all right, Nat. I remember everything. I can remember it for him.”


End file.
